


Four Meals

by Glinda



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Dining at the Ritz (Good Omens), Eating, Food, Food as a Metaphor for Love, Hand Feeding, Other, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-02-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:54:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22820566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glinda/pseuds/Glinda
Summary: In the aftermath of the almost apocalypse Aziraphale and Crowley share four meals as they figure out what they are to each other now.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 67





	1. Breakfast

**Author's Note:**

> Four related vignettes written for the 'meals' prompt table at monthlysuperego on dw

Crowley leans in doorway and watches himself eat breakfast. This is a process made less existentially unnerving by knowing that Aziraphale currently occupies his usual corporation – as he himself is occupying the angel’s corporal shell – but it’s still decidedly weird. They’ve been up half the night, planning, talking and trying to master each other’s bodies. Objectively Crowley knows that when they put their minds to it they do decent impressions of each other, but nonetheless, watching Aziraphale pick at his toast, he can’t imagine how anyone could fail to see Aziraphale shining out of that demonic corporation.

Aziraphale glances up from his task – he’s now cutting his toast up into neat little squares – and they share a wry smile before Crowley pushes himself upright and joins him at the table. Calling on muscle memory to prevent himself falling back into his more usual slink. It helps that Aziraphale’s hips literally don’t move like that. Once he’s settled in his seat Aziraphale offers up some of his toast, which Crowley refuses on autopilot, until Aziraphale sighs deeply and speaks with an effort.

“Psychologically, I’m hungry, but this body is considerably less accustomed to regular food intake and isn’t co-operating with the whole eating thing, so you must be physically ravenous, you just haven’t noticed yet,” he press the toast corner to Crowley’s lips again, “eat.”

Crowley obliges. It’s good. Good enough that he accepts another piece, eventually allowing Aziraphale to feed him the whole slice piecemeal. The toast is perfectly crisp, the marmalade an exquisite balance of sweet and tart that Crowley – always more a jam person – can’t recall ever enjoying toast quite so much in his life. 

“Does it always taste so…” he trails off, unsure how to ask the questions he half knows the answer to, about whether food literally tastes better for Aziraphale than for him. 

“Could ask you the same thing,” Aziraphale replies wryly. Crowley raises his eyebrow questioningly – and the muscle memory there requires no effort at all, they both do that – and Aziraphale continues. “When you feed me things, does it always feel so…?”

“Satisfying?” Crowley offers, Aziraphale nods but also slowly twirls his hand elegantly to indicate more, and Crowley lets the knowledge sit between them that now they both know how that has always made him feel before continuing, “yes that too. Had to ration it out.”

Aziraphale’s pupils blow out making him look rather more like a happy cat than a snake, but now Crowley also knows what Aziraphale’s body feels about that response and that’s, certainly informative. 

“We should,” Aziraphale replies hesitantly, “take some time. To explore that. Thoroughly. Afterwards.”

“Yes,” Crowley agrees, “afterwards.”

It’s not as though Crowley had needed incentive to pull this off, but well, it always helps to have something to concentrate the mind.


	2. Lunch

A spot of lunch, Crowley calls it, but just because they’re seated at half one, does not make what they have anything less than a terribly decadent afternoon tea. The sandwiches with their different types of bread – Sourdough, Brioche, Granary, Tomato, all so clearly freshly baked that day – the perfect little cakes on the side, the scones so crisp on the outside remain light and fluffy inside, to say nothing of the clotted cream. They argue good naturedly over the eighteen varieties of tea – some of them, Crowley points out, are tisanes, including Aziraphale notes, the one that Crowley is drinking – and their bottle of Ritz champagne keeps refilling itself throughout the afternoon. 

He’s also utterly certain that the Ritz’s afternoon tea does not normally include tiny perfectly formed sausage rolls or canapés but he has a hankering and when Crowley reaches for the pastries, they’re rather more savoury than sweet in nature. 

Aziraphale has always enjoyed eating with Crowley for a variety of reasons, chief among them though never acknowledged, was the feeling of having Crowley’s entire attention. Except that apparently, there is a world of difference between having Crowley’s attention when he’s pretending you don’t and having his attention when he’s done pretending. It’s intense. To use Crowley’s more colourful idiom, it’s like finding that the speaker truly does go up to eleven. Every time he catches Crowley’s eye it’s like Aziraphale forgets to breathe.

They’ve been walking along a cliff edge together for so long, both of them afraid and unable to honestly broach the subject – it’s been wonderful and terrible. But now, now they know that they’re walking it together, they aren’t alone any more, they can truly enjoy the push pull of it. The edge is just over there and they can jump right off whenever they like, safe in the knowledge that the other will catch them when they fall. 

They know they’re going home together after, but there’s no rush, they have all the time in the world. So for now, they’ll wind the tension a little tighter, feed each other further little morsels, and the eventual release will be all the sweeter. 

They linger just a little longer.


	3. Supper

People rave about Brighton, and Crowley definitely has some fond memories of the place – mods and rockers for one thing – he’s always preferred Bournemouth. The beach with its soft clean sand is far superior to Brighton’s pebbles. And if the train journey from London is longer and the railway station isn’t as grand, it has a charm to it that appeals more to Crowley. A tang of faded glamour and touches of slightly camp ridiculousness that he knows appeals to Aziraphale too. Those ridiculous yellow taxis for another thing. 

(Crowley claims to have nothing to do with the high percentage of retired drag queens that they encounter taking an early evening promenade. Aziraphale is delighted to encounter some old friends from Soho and earnestly envious of their continued ability to walk in heels. He himself can’t manage anything higher than two inches; Crowley tells him it’s all in the hip movement.)

It’s late summer though, and most of the tourists have gone home, so mostly the beach is populated by students and courting couples, enjoying the last of those balmy evenings. Aziraphale is generally resistant to chains and would normally put up a fight about patronising a Harry Ramsdens, but he makes no comment when Crowley plonks himself down on the tartan rug beside him in the gathering dusk. Silently handing over a fish supper before impossibly pulling a purloined bottle of vinegar from a pocket – Aziraphale enjoys the sharpness of a good malt vinegar on his chips but he hates soggy chips - and then settling in with his own dinner. The batter is thick and crisp, the fish flaky and still moist, while the chips are the perfect thickness. Between bites they exchange anecdotes about chip shops they have known and loved over the years. (They have both spent too many hours with humans they’ve tempted or blessed, in the saddest hours of the night or the morning, where a shared bag of chips had been the best possible opening gambit.) Also between mouthfuls, they are both edging closer to each other on the blanket, until by the time Crowley vanishes their rubbish, they are practically shoulder-to-shoulder. 

Afterwards, the now dark sky erupts suddenly into light and sound, as the municipal Friday night firework display kicks off. The student’s cheers victoriously, calling to each other regarding their respective rightness or wrongness about the previous week’s display having been the last of the season. Aziraphale catches Crowley’s eye and they share a mischievous grin and an unspoken byplay about temptation and persuasiveness. Aziraphale returns his gaze to the fireworks, slowly edging his fingers over Crowley’s own until Crowley turns his hand over and lets them intertwine. He remembers dragging Aziraphale to a firework display in Song Dynasty China; that shared moment of joy standing in the dark, at the inventiveness of humans stands out so clearly. Here and now though he realises that Aziraphale had probably wanted to hold his hand then just as much as Crowley had. There’s so much still unspoken between them, but here on the beach, pleasantly full of fried food, and surrounded by the beauty – both natural and human – of the world, it feels as though nothing else needs to be said.


	4. Midnight Snack

Aziraphale wakes in the middle of the night and for a moment is utterly disorientated. It’s around 2am and his stomach is rumbling, which is unusual in itself. While Aziraphale is hardly a stranger to the notion of a midnight snack, he rarely sleeps long enough to wake up hungry. Also it is pitch black in the room where he’s been sleeping and the last time that happened somewhere he called home, had been prior to the introduction of street lighting. 

He obeys his unwontedly noisy stomach and escapes the pitch-black bedroom, finding himself in Crowley’s flat. Which explains the lack of light, but not his own sleeping presence, or in fact, Crowley’s absence. He’s fairly certain that he hadn’t gone to sleep in Crowley’s flat; in fact he was almost sure that Crowley was still on the other side of the Atlantic, tying up some ‘unfinished business’. (By which Aziraphale had presumed he meant, checking up on Warlock, though he’d never call his friend out on that subject.) On bare feet, he softly moved through the flat to the kitchen, finding crackers in the cupboard and cheese in the fridge and making himself a plate. It didn’t occur to him to wonder if, they were there because he expected to find them or if Crowley had stocked them particularly in case of his presence. 

Having acquired sustenance to quiet his stomach, Aziraphale sets about finding out whether he’s alone in the place or if Crowley is around to shed some light on the surreal situation he’s found himself in. The rest of the flat is not pitch black, nor is it lit by its usual gloomily mysterious lighting arrangements. Instead shafts of moonlight light his way courtesy of the unusually un-shuttered windows. Honestly, if it weren’t for the occasional grumbles of his stomach, Aziraphale would be starting to suspect he was having one of those dreams that the humans went on about. Instead he finds Crowley draped on his thoroughly uncomfortable looking throne in the study. Looking dramatically and handsomely pensive in the moonlight. It was, Aziraphale thought, all the more attractive for being unintentional – he knew exactly what Crowley looked like when he was ‘posing’ and it was attractive in a very different way – a point which Crowley proved by promptly falling out of his chair when he realised he had an audience. If anything it made Aziraphale immeasurably fonder of him in that moment. 

Crowley manages to catch himself mid-fall and turns it into an almost-graceful tumble to fold himself elegantly on the floor at the foot of his throne. He is, Aziraphale suspects, surprised to see Aziraphale specifically rather than generally, as though he were aware that he was in the flat but not that he was awake. After a long moment the demon speaks.

“I purposefully didn’t come round to yours when I got in, because it was so late, and I thought you’d be asleep or in the middle of something, then I came here and there you were. Fast asleep in my bed,” he continues more quietly, “as though I’d willed you there.” 

“I was fairly certain I didn’t fall asleep where I woke up,” agrees Aziraphale mildly. “Cracker? This cheese is excellent; I must know where you got it. Certainly not the states, American cheese is almost universally terrible.”

“It doesn’t bother you that I apparently, unintentionally teleported you across London in your sleep?” Crowley asks, unwilling to let go of the point. 

Carefully Aziraphale lowers himself to the floor beside Crowley, proffering a morsel in silent insistence until Crowley takes it from him, continuing to watch Aziraphale with wide, worried eyes, now with gentle crunching. Aziraphale finishes his current cracker before placing the plate with the remains between them and settling in with his head on Crowley’s shoulder. 

“No,” he replies eventually and firmly, “I missed you too.”


End file.
